May 2010 — The Lagoon Nebula

The third image of ESO’s GigaGalaxy Zoom project is an amazing vista of the Lagoon Nebula taken with the 67-million-pixel Wide Field Imager (WFI) attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The Lagoon Nebula is located four to five thousand light-years away towards the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer) and spans about 100 light-years. Dark clumps of gas and dust speckle this giant interstellar cloud and reveal where new stars will soon form as the matter collapses due to the force of gravity. The image covers more than one and a half square degrees — an area eight times larger than that of the full Moon — with a total of about 370 million pixels. It is based on images acquired using three different broadband filters (B, V, R) and one narrowband filter (H-alpha).